Chennai: IIT Madras Foundation organized the Foundation Series – Summer 2017 Summit at Santa Clara, California, USA, recently. The purpose of the summit was to bring together IIT Madras community, faculty, start-ups and alumni to collaborate with each other and with innovators in industry, academia, and think tanks to address problems and opportunities that could be global in nature.

Some of the topics that were discussed during this summit include: Technologies that enable Industry 4.0 (these could be virtual/augmented reality technologies for instance); Capturing Data and Data Sources (research on sensors and other devices that help capture data); Communicating this data between machines and other devices/sensors/data sources; Data Analytics, Modelling and Simulation to use this data effectively; and The actual Manufacturing/Automation/Making process that is the end result (this could be 3D printing, creation of new applications, tools, devices, products, robots, systems such as IOTs (Internet of Things).

This was first such event organized by IIT Madras Foundation. Fifteen academics and seven start-up founders from IIT Madras took part along with 22 industry leaders from the Bay Area. Addressing the event, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi, Director, IIT-Madras, highlighted key achievements of IIT Madras: IIT-Madras was ranked the best engineering institute in India by National Institute Ranking Framework (NIRF), two years in a row;  IIT-Madras earned the highest revenues through consultancy projects for any engineering institute;  Four out of five start-ups at the Economic Times National Start-up contest came from IIT-Madras Incubation Centre;  IIT-Madras ranks among the top research groups in the world; and  the Healthcare incubator, Healthcare Technology Innovation Centre, at IIT-Madras is the premier incubator of its kind in India.

Post-event, Prof. Bhaskar Ramamurthi said “While the event was a grand success and we may have exceeded the expectations of many, we also learned a lot. We need to use this as a launchpad, build on this momentum, and take this to the next level in the coming years.”

Speaking during the programme, Prof. R. Nagarajan, Dean, International and Alumni Relations, IIT Madras, said, “While the Director (Prof. Bhaskar) and myself have been travelling abroad and meeting local alumni, this is the first time an event of such magnitude has been organized, enabling direct interaction with IIT-Madras faculty members who are active researchers in Industry 4.0″

“For a first-time event, this was hugely successful and will be replicated in the future in other cities abroad where our (IIT-Madras) alumni are present in significant numbers.”

Prof. Krishnan Balasubramaniam, Dean, Industrial Consultancy and Sponsored Research, IIT Madras spoke about the various collaborations with the industry undertaken by the institute.